Ambush, kidnaps as Iraq braces for vote results

Insurgents mounted a major ambush in Baghdad yesterday, killing up to 10 people and kidnapping one and possibly two African engineers in a second coordinated attack in the capital in as many days.

In the southern city of Basra, two employees of a US security firm were killed and one wounded when their convoy was blasted by a bomb; the family of a kidnapped American journalist appealed for her release as a group possibly linked to her abductors said it freed a sister of Iraq's Interior Minister.

Security forces say they are bracing for a possible spike in violence by Sunni Arab rebels when the final results of last month's election come out, probably on Friday; they will show continued dominance for the ruling Shi'ite Islamist bloc.

In the Sunni stronghold of Falluja, west of Baghdad, police issued fliers telling residents routes in and out of the city would be closed until Saturday due to the results' announcement.

But talk among private security consultants of a possible closure of airports and borders as part of a broad clampdown to coincide with the announcement brought denials or refusals to comment from Iraqi and US officials, who imposed a nationwide curfew for several days for the largely peaceful December 15 vote. President Jalal Talabani urged the Sunni minority to drop complaints about vote rigging and start negotiating to join in a coalition government with his Kurdish bloc and the Shi'ites:

"It is natural that some brothers will object," he said. "But I think that once the results are announced then it should be accepted by everyone, even if unwillingly."

He expressed hope in an interview that consensus politics could end violence that has blighted Iraq since US forces ousted Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated government.

The trial of Saddam was thrown into fresh confusion when the commission charged with rooting out his Baath party followers from positions of power said the newly named chief judge was being investigated and should be barred.

The US-sponsored trial has already been rocked by the killings of two defence lawyers, accusations of sectarian and ethnic bias and the resignation of the previous chief judge, who complained politicians accused him of being soft on Saddam.

There was no word on the fate of the telephone engineers from Malawi and Madagascar after gunmen swarmed onto a busy street to trap the armed convoy in which they were travelling.

Police said the Malawian had definitely been seized but it was unclear what had happened to his colleague.

Witnesses and officials said masked gunmen killed at least nine Iraqis and kidnapped the Malawian barely 12 hours after an armed band attacked the compound of a firm supplying food to the Iraqi army in the capital, killing seven Iraqis.

The Malawian engineer and his Madagascan colleague, both employees of a local, Egyptian-owned mobile telephone operator, were travelling from home to work, their employer said.

As their convoy of three or four vehicles drove down the main street in the Nafaq al-Shurta area, "a large number" of gunmen hiding in buildings opened fire as other attackers drove out of side streets, an Interior Ministry official said. A Reuters cameraman counted nine bodies in the hospital morgue. The Interior Ministry source said 10 security guards had been killed in the ambush and up to three people kidnapped.

Diplomatic negotiations continued with Iran over an incident in which Iraqi officials accused Iranian forces of "kidnapping" nine Iraqi coastguards on their tidal waterway frontier in the south. Having previously denied knowledge of it, Iran said Iraqi vessels had encroached on its territorial waters.